Cuba is the only country in the world to have opened its educational system with all its staff and students vaccinated against COVID-19, while not a single child has died from the disease, since immunization of the pediatric population was completed.
This was recalled yesterday, February 8, by Yuri Valdés Balbín, deputy director of the Finlay Vaccine Institute, describing the decisive participation of Cuban universities in the COVID-19 battle.
Speaking at the University 2022 International Congress, the National Assembly deputy and decorated Hero of Labor, explained that, from the beginning, it was understood, by the country and the scientific community, that we needed to respond to the emergency with the capacity and abilities we had, in particular a vaccine industry with more than 30 years of experience and precedents of successful collaboration between the industry and universities.
He recalled that, in the 1980s, the common understanding was that vaccines did not work in children under two years of age, until in 1987, when a laboratory at the University of Havana solved the problem, and another laboratory at the same institution, the Laboratory of Synthetic Antigens, in 1989 began research on of conjugated vaccines. "We are talking about knowledge that was developed in a university and that was subsequently used to solve a health problem."
He gave the example of the Quimi-Him conjugate vaccine (against haemophilus influenzae type B), based on the design developed at the university, which was later inserted in a pentavalent formulation, as well as the Quimi-Vio vaccine (against Streptococcus pneumoniae), which gives the country sovereignty in having our own resources to fight diseases produced by a bacterium considered "child killer."
Knowledge emerging from our universities has shown that we are capable of doing science with social impact, with positive economic repercussions, Valdés stated, insisting that Cuba's response to COVID-19 provided an impressive example of this accomplishment.
Cuba’s third place ranking in vaccination coverage worldwide, according to the international reference website Our World in Data provides more resounding evidence, noted in a tweet by Party First Secretary and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez: "It was not easy to get there, but we did it in the worst circumstances. The difficulty, as so many times throughout our history, became an opportunity," he wrote.
